


monday morning

by emkayss



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, half broody sad ronan and half fluffy kisses and handholding, kinda angsty but with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 06:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6505834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emkayss/pseuds/emkayss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe they’ve finally realized that whatever the fuck they’re doing isn’t going to work, isn’t going to last. Counting stars won’t help two people whose relationship gets lost in lust and hate and love so often and so completely it can be difficult to find a way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	monday morning

**Author's Note:**

> im really sad ok and u know what i do when im sad......... i project my problems onto fictional characters and give them a happy ending. also im gonna pre-apologize for how ooc they are ... im sorry ...

It happens eventually, because it has to. 

Maybe Gansey’s death shoved them apart rather than pulling them together. Maybe they’ve finally realized that whatever the fuck they’re doing isn’t going to work, isn’t going to last. Counting stars won’t help two people whose relationship gets lost in lust and hate and love so often and so completely it can be difficult to find a way out. 

Maybe, Ronan thinks, they’re too similar. They’re magnets, not opposites attract, not that, but rather someone’s trying desperately to push together two bits of metal with the same pole. 

Adam moves away for college and they stop talking. That’s it. That’s all. It happens gradually, like Adam’s planned the whole thing out in advance so Ronan won't figure it out: for the first couple of weeks they talk, they use the minutes of Adam’s shitty phone plan up easily, until they're down to texts. And then emails. And then the month ends and his plan restarts, like the moon, and Ronan’s phone rings in the middle of the night; Adam calls and repeats4 whatever he'd said in his emails, tells Ronan everything he'd missed. 

A couple times, Adam calls and sweet talks Ronan until he’s hard, coaxing him through it, breath laboured on the other side of the line, until both of them come and Ronan falls asleep without hanging up. Adam always does though, because he’s still counting off the seconds even when he’s jerking himself off, tallying up all the forevers he’s missing out on. But, orgasms are the one of the few things that make Adam forget, just a for a few moments, and Ronan knows this. 

One month, Adam doesn't call. He texts once or twice, doesn't say why or anything, but never calls. And Ronan waits, sits on his hands, occupies himself with other things. 

He doesn't talk to him until Christmas. 

But hey, Ronan’s used to having his heart broken. He's pretty good at shoving everything up inside and going about his life like nothing's wrong. His dad dying? Whatever. Gansey dying? Who cares. Adam breaking off all contact for no apparent reason? Who could give a flying fuck. 

Maybe he’s just busy, a small part of Ronan thinks. The rest of him comes up with answers that Ronan pushes down, stuffs underwater until they drown, except they can’t, and he’s stuck awake at night wondering if Adam’s changed his mind, if he’s met someone else, if he’s decided it would be easier to be with a girl. Ronan doesn’t blame him. 

It still hurts, though. Too much. He’s left waiting for an answer, waiting, waiting, waiting, swimming aimlessly in an ocean that's too big for him with no sign of the shore. 

It's easier to cover it all up with sneers and tattoos, only thinking about it when he's drunk or when the stars above the Barns are so bright they hurt his eyes or the split second when the world winds itself around his windshield before he slams on the breaks. Even then Ronan’s not thinking about it, whatever the fuck it is. His brain skips around all topics that cut, dipping a hand into test out the waters and pulling it back out quickly. It's too hot, too cold, too much. 

So it's easier not to. And Ronan’s really good at _not._

He doesn't know why, doesn't know how, but he knows that it's happened and it’s something he has to deal with. 

.

Ronan won’t tell you he’s paying attention to the date, counting down the days until winter break starts and Adam’s supposed to come back. _Come back,_ like he’s coming back to something, like there’s someone there waiting stagnantly for his return. Which Ronan isn’t. He’s not _waiting._ He doesn’t belong to Adam, and Adam doesn’t belong to him. It’s as simple as that, and Ronan’s sick of believing otherwise. 

Except, on the day winter break starts, Ronan’s phone buzzes, which wouldn’t be odd but it’s _Ronan,_ and no one really has any interest in texting him. 

There’s twenty minutes lost when Ronan prays it isn’t Adam and hopes to God it is, and his eyes are closed tight when he makes himself flip it over. He eases himself into it, only opening one eye at a time and—

It’s Adam. He’s in DC, at the airport. He says he’ll buy Ronan dinner if he’ll come and pick him up. He doesn’t ask, just puts the offer out there for Ronan to either ignore or accept. 

It’s Adam.

_It’s Adam._

.

There isn’t anywhere right in front of the airport to park, so Ronan pulls up in the closest spot he can get to the doors. He drops his keys in his pocket, not bothering to lock up. He just closes it behind him and starts towards the place Adam said they’ll meet.

Ronan finds Adam waiting for him on the sidewalk. He’s standing near the curb, fiddling with something between his fingers, and there’s a car coming up behind him, headlights bright and shaking, paving a way through the snowy dark, and there’s Adam, backlit, only recognizable by the shape of his silhouette: the slouch of his shoulders, the wisps of his hair, his height, his berth. Ronan shoves his hands in his pockets and walks a little faster. 

As soon as he’s close enough, Ronan’s fingers wrap around Adam’s forearm. Adam starts, genuinely surprised for a second. But he recovers quickly, like he always does, spinning around and running his hands lightly down Ronan's arms, squeezing his fingers before tucking his hands back in his pockets. 

Adam says hi. Ronan says hi back. He doesn’t know if they’re pretending the last month and a half didn’t happen, doesn’t know if it’s going to be awkward between them yet. So he lets Adam make the next move. 

"So?" Adam breathes, close enough to Ronan that he doesn’t have to speak louder than a whisper. "To the Barns?" 

Ronan nods, his forehead rubbing up against the side of Adam's head, soft against his hair. He feels like he could last forever. "To the Barns," he says. 

Ronan reaches down and runs the ends of his fingers along the back of Adam’s hand, as if he’s easing himself into it, dipping his toes in the water, asking and inviting and waiting for Adam to flip his hand over so he can hold it. 

He wants to tell him, _“I can't drink milk anymore,”_ that every time he watches someone fill up a glass a has to look away, that his mind plays back mornings where the sun had caught Adam’s hair as he'd unfolded the top of the litre of milk that perennially found its way into the door of his fridge.

There are only so many fingers on Ronan's hands, so he has to count the number of times he'd caught Adam with a mug of milk in his right hand and a pen or a notebook or a textbook in his other somewhere else. 

It’s weird, he knows that, but he starts to keep a list of everything he can’t look at or listen to or eat because every time he does it’s like someone’s dragging something hot and sharp down the front of his chest. Milk’s at the top, because for some odd reason Adam _loves_ milk. Ronan’s watched him finish entire cartons in one contained period of time. 

When did this happen? When did a single part of Ronan start depending so fully and completely on something he can’t have anymore? He knows about breakups, he’s seen movies, but they haven’t—no one has told Ronan, no one has spelled it out for him in a way that he can easily comprehend and put together in a way that makes sense. 

Exes doesn't sound right. But boyfriends doesn't either. Friends, then? Who fucked a couple times in high school and then moved on to bigger and better things? Who moved on and desperately try not to remember how it felt have a hand in theirs, a private smile shared in the early hours of the morning? 

But here they are, bundled into the comfortable darkness of the BMW, music taking up any awkward silence between them. It’s almost like that silence never happened, but _almost_ means there’s still remnants, whatever’s between them sitting in Ronan’s mouth like a bad aftertaste. 

It's not too cold at the Barns. It's cool enough that their breath puffs out in front of them against the sky; cloudy and almost stark against that inky blue dotted with light. The stars are so hard to ignore. If it were a little warmer, Ronan would entertain settling on their backs in the grass, watching the stars pull themselves through the pitchy black. 

They settle on Ronan’s bed instead, Adam propped up over him on his elbows. Kissing Adam is like riding a bike, even if part of him feels like they shouldn’t be doing this. He wants to though, _fuck,_ does he want to, so he indulges like he’s never indulged before.

Adam’s neck is bent so he can make their kiss work, and Ronan’s fingers catch on the bony lumps of his spine in his neck. Ronan can't be bothered to hold in the whimper he makes in the back of his throat—he feels all of his embarrassment leak out of his body when Adam traces the tips of his fingers under Ronan’s shirt, winding around the lines of what Ronan knows is his tattoo. 

He wants Adam’s hands under his shirt, to just take his shirt off, but he doesn't know how to ask for that, so he doesn’t, sitting and sinking and revelling in the way Adam wraps his fingers around his wrists and slides his lips across his collarbone. Adam’s hands and his lips are so warm and Ronan’s _so warm,_ and he doesn’t know if he can breathe, doesn’t know if he can try. 

When they pull apart, Ronan pushes Adam away a bit, only far enough for him to pull his own shirt over his head and toss it over the edge of the bed. Adam does the same, and he shakes his head after his shirt’s gone.

Five fingertips rest on Ronan’s chest, gently pushing him until he’s on his back again. Ronan brings his hands up to Adam’s sides, running them up until his fingers are at his shoulders, and he doesn’t have to pull at all for Adam to bend his neck so their lips are meeting, again. Adam’s kissing him slow, like he's trying to prove something, or he's just as caught up in this as he is and he's feeling music rising up in him, tingling and electric. 

The first time they kissed, the world was spinning, and it still is, faster and as dizzying as ever. Ronan falls asleep between arms that aren’t his and a blanket that belonged to a much younger version of himself; under a ceiling of imagined colours and swirling daydreams.

.

There’s a certain sequence of events that Ronan’s accustomed to, even after a few months of nothing.

Adam’s always up before the sun, and Ronan’s used to waking up on his own, but something that sits funny in his stomach when he closes his eyes with Adam’s chest pressed warm his back and opens them to an empty bed.

He blinks awake, slowly, carefully. His room’s still drowning in wintery dark, and he doesn’t have to roll over to know Adam’s already gone. He presses the heels of his palms to his face, hard, then reaches over to pull his phone from the pocket of his jeans where they’re balled up on the floor. 

The screen of Ronan’s phone is empty when it comes to life, nothing from Blue or Declan or Matthew or anyone else he might expect a text from. There’s nothing from Adam either, but that’t to be expected. 

But it isn’t, is it, because Adam’s _back,_ and he fell asleep squashed up beside Ronan last night, and Ronan knows he doesn’t have any work over the break. (He knows because he made him agree to not work when they were still talking, and Adam’s one to keep his promises.) He’s not in the kitchen either, when Ronan stumbles down the stairs to look. The BMW’s still parked haphazardly outside. It doesn’t even take half a second for Ronan to piece it all together, because where else would a magician want to go when he’s found himself back at his swampy source, why would Adam _not_ want to go breathe in the trees and the magic and the sharp winter air? 

So Ronan pulls on his jacket, stuffs himself into the car, slams the door, and follows the road to Cabeswater. 

.

Adam’s not hard to find.

The road ends in a clearing, not too dissimilar from where they’d found Noah’s bones. Trees loom on the edges, the canopies drooping over into the empty space. Adam’s in the middle of it, just standing there with his eyes half shut and his arms at his sides. Ronan imagines he’s staring at something deep in the forest that Ronan can’t see. The noise of the door shutting behind Ronan is silent, but he can feel all the eyes in and of Cabeswater turn to look at him.

Adam turns too, and Ronan can’t make out any of the details of his face, can’t see the colour of his eyes. Adam cocks his head to the right, like he’s heard something, but that doesn’t really add up because he can’t hear out of his left ear, but Ronan’s breath stutters at the sight of his neck elongated, and how his shoulders drop — somewhere between terrible and terrific — like he’s finally able to really truly relax, like he’s finally able to breath through his nose instead of heavy through his mouth, like he could drop into a heavy sleep, like he could twist his fingers through Ronan’s and smirk and tell him _we’ll be alright, you just watch._

Ronan can hear birds then, and he supposes it should be a little weird because it’s the middle of December, but things like that haven’t fazed him for a while. He tugs his jacket off and throws it in the backseat of the BMW, and closes the door. He wraps his arms around himself, because it’s muscle memory to keep himself warm by now, and rubs his hands down his arms. He takes a step towards Adam, slowly, carefully, because he knows to be gentle when Adam’s got Cabeswater speaking through his mouth. 

Adam speaks then, but when he talks it isn’t his voice, it’s ten voices, one hundred, more than that, pressed over one another so when he says _Ronan?_ his voice shakes in a way Ronan isn’t used to, crumbles over itself. 

“Hey, Adam,” Ronan tries, and a breeze lifts Adam’s hair, cool and ethereal, drawing goosebumps to the surface of Ronan’s skin. The air smells like Cabeswater: like trees and earth and the familiar taste of latin on Ronan’s tongue, like the shape of Ronan’s dreams and mint leaves and it leaves Ronan’s head spinning, tumbling with his feet planted to the ground. A tree swaying in a hurricane. 

Adam takes a step forward, and Ronan wishes he hadn’t left his jacket in the car when Adam lays a hand on the bare skin of Ronan’s arm. The jacket’s not for him, no, the jacket’s for Adam, because as soon as he steps out of that sweet reverie of his, Ronan catches the pink on his cheeks and across his nose, notices the way his teeth are chattering and his fingers are shaking. Adam opens his mouth, as if to say something, but Ronan beats him to it. 

“Shit, let me get you my jacket,” he says under his breath, running his hand up Adam’s arm once and squeezing his shoulder before turning on his heel and jogging back to the BMW. He yanks the door open, grabbing his jacket from the backseat, before heading back to where Adam’s standing. He doesn’t bother to close the door, or to grab the extra sweater tucked away in the trunk for himself, just pulls the sleeves out where they’d fallen in on themselves, and drapes it over Adam’s shoulders. 

Adam dips his head, and it’s only because Ronan knows Adam Parrish down to a science that he recognizes the movement as a thank you. 

A steady breeze winds through, winds up Ronan’s back and holds him still. Still when Adam’s hand comes up to rest against his cheek. Still when Adam takes half a step forward. 

Ronan moves to kiss him, slow, his fingers coming up to hold the side of his face, his jaw. He keeps his touch light, in case it's too much, in case Adam needs to shove him away—Ronan gets that, he does. His head is spinning again when Adam kisses back, electric and _everything._

Adam pulls away first, pushing his head down into Ronan’s neck to hide his face. Ronan immediately brings his hand up to hold him by the nape of his neck. He rubs the skin there with his thumb, slowing when he hears Adam say something. He thinks he heard it right, but he’s not sure, so he stutters out a _What?_ in time with his heart. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam says, loud enough that Ronan can hear him this time. “For leaving, I mean.” 

Something deep in Ronan’s chest blooms, gently unfolds until it’s wide open. “Hey,” he whispers. “It’s fine. I found you.” 

Adam’s head droops a little further, like he’s relieved, until Ronan’s pretty much holding him up. “Yeah, you did.” 

.

Stark lines of light fall over their exposed skin, strong and bright against the drowsy dark, until it stumbles upon crumpled sheets, trips and falls over bony shoulders and sharp shoulder blades. It always manages to hit Adam square in the eyes, and Ronan’s used to the way he groans and flips over so it’ll catch the back of his head instead. Ronan wiggles down to press a kiss to Adam’s lips, knowing it’ll end when Adam wakes up for real, and he’s smiling too wide to deepen the kiss.

It’s too cold in Ronan’s room for them not to be touching, but Ronan still feels like he's a thousand kilometres away, a thousand lifetimes behind. He has his legs wrapped between Adam’s, and he’s got arms tight around his middle.

With a heaving sigh, Adam extricates himself from Ronan and flops on his back beside him. 

Ronan props himself up on his side, his palm digging into his cheek. “So.” 

_“So,”_ Adam says, turning the word into a single, winding vowel that sounds more like music to Ronan’s ears, the drawn-out sibilance of it making his heart speed up for half a second. “You want to talk about it, right?” 

“We don’t have to,” Ronan says too quickly. Part of him wants to entirely avoid this conversation, but at the same time he needs to hear whatever it is that Adam’s going to _talk about._

“We do,” Adam assures. _“I_ do, at least.” 

“About what?” 

“Us. _Me.”_ Adam points at himself. “What _I_ did. Or, what I didn’t do, I guess.” 

Ronan shakes his head in favour of responding. 

“I know how you work, Ronan, at least when it comes to me. You shut down when I was gone. You stopped working. And I know you blamed yourself — you’re probably still blaming yourself — but it’s my fault. It’s all mine, Ronan,” Adam flips up on his side too, bringing his hands up to frame Ronan’s face. “I’m sorry. For…”Adam shakes his head, his mouth a thin line. “…For what I did in the fall, running away yesterday.” He shrugs. “For everything else.” 

“You—” Ronan starts, but he doesn’t have anything to say, he _can’t_ have anything to say. Especially when he’s got Adam’s fingers on his face and Adam in his bed and Adam telling him things he’d never thought he’d hear. “You don’t have to have to apologize. Like, you _really_ don’t have to. It’s fine; all of it, it’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Adam says, and Ronan immediately understands his words are definite. “I really fucked up, Ronan.”

“Fine, okay, you did," Ronan admits, finally. "You _really_ did. I couldn’t even drink milk, because every time I did I thought about you.” 

“Shit, _really?”_ Adam looks like he’s about to laugh, and Ronan’s glad they can laugh about it. It makes his stomach settle. “You know that’s kind of stupid, right?” 

“Don’t fucking patronize me! You’re the one that pretended I didn’t exist for a month and a half!” 

“Whatever,” Adam drawls, smiling, and drags Ronan by the back of the neck so he’s on top of him, and they’re kissing. 

Their kiss almost doesn’t work because they’re smiling too hard, but they make it work. They always do.

**Author's Note:**

> get hype for canon pynch with me on tumblr @emkayss and twitter @mirakayss


End file.
